CUTTING PAPER - COUNTING - Storage
 

Storage

Most of us store lots of paper on our desks, on shelves, in filing cabinets, and perhaps in central long-term storage away from our individual offices, possibly in a different building.  With less paper around, you might be able to do with fewer filing cabinets, saving the cost of the cabinet and the floor space it occupies.  While paper sits on your desk, it isn’t reasonable to include the cost of the desk and the space it uses as part of the cost of paper as you’d need a desk regardless of how much paper you use.

To get a handle on your paper storage costs, first count, or estimate, the number of file cabinets you have.  You can measure or estimate how much floor area they occupy.  A common footprint for a file cabinet is 2.5 ft2, though if you count the space an open drawer uses, you might double this figure.  Multiply by the value of that floor area and you might get a cost from $25 to $100 per year for the space.

Assuming 2,000 sheets/foot of file space, a typical 4-drawer cabinet might have a capacity of 16,000 sheets.  Assuming it is just 75% full, it would contain 12,000 sheets or 24 reams.  At $2.50/ream, this is $60 of paper, and so the value of the floor area is often comparable to an annual paper purchase cost of the paper in it.

While the file cabinet itself lasts many years, it costs several times the cost of this paper, so is notable, but less than the paper or floor area cost.  All of these usually pale in comparison to the value of the time spent filing and retrieving papers from the file cabinet.

Whoever is responsible for your long-term storage can probably provide some cost figures.

Storage

Clever Inc. has 140 file cabinets, each of which occupy about 2.5 ft2 of floor area, for a total of 350 ft2. 

The annual rent for Clever Inc.'s offices is $30 per square foot, so that the dollar cost of this space is $10,500 each year.  Ten file cabinets wear out and are replaced each year at a cost of $1,500. 

Thus, the combined storage cost is $12,000 per year. 

 
 
 
 
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